Apparently, Arlen Specter used to be a Republican or something

Even the National Republican Senatorial Committee realizes that the best way to “go negative” on Specter is to link him to George W. Bush:

The message encourages listeners to go to this website which has lots of documentation of how Republican Specter has been over the years. It’s kind of hilarious, when you think about it, but if the Republican Party is running a campaign against Specter’s Republican history, where does that leave them, exactly?

Also hilarious: Despite targeting this ad at Democratic voters, the GOP can’t help but resort to its favorite little insult — calling Specter a “Democrat Senator” instead of a “Democratic Senator.” So the GOP strategy is to insult the voters they’re appealing to AND to mock GOP stances.

Awesome.

In defense of homophobia

Conservative commentator John Derbyshire sometimes comes across as your bigoted grandfather: He expresses some really dreadful opinions sometimes, but he’s so unfailingly cheerful about it that the inclination is to squeeze his cheeks, laugh and pocket the $5 he gives you for “running-around money.”

Derbyshire is a pretty committed secularist, though, but he’s hardly agnostic about gay marriage: He’s against it on non-religious grounds. What’s interesting about his defense, though, is that he doesn’t limit himself to a defense of heterosexuals-only marriage — he actually goes ahead and defends homophobia itself. Why? Because people tend to be homophobes:

Human nature exists, and has fixed characteristics. We are not infinitely malleable. Human society and human institutions need to ”fit” human nature, or at least not go too brazenly against the grain of it. Homophobia seems to be a rooted condition in us. It has been present always and everywhere, if only minimally (and unfairly — there has always been a double standard here) in disdain for “the man who plays the part of a woman.” There has never, anywhere, at any level of civilization, been a society that approved egalitarian (i.e. same age, same status) homosexual bonding. This tells us something about human nature — something it might be wisest (and would certainly be conservative-est) to leave alone.

Here’s a good rule of thumb: Beware any commenter who confidently asserts the “fixed characteristics” of human nature — especially when that commenter is speaking for or against social policy. Derbyshire here presents himself as a hard truth-teller — not really passing judgment for or against homophobia, just noting that it exists.

Except that civilization forces us to make judgements about “human characteristics” all the time. You could argue that people are naturally racist, that there’s a built-in fear of “the other” stuck in the caveman part of our brains that makes us cast automatic judgments on people who look different from us. But racism, it’s now pretty universally agreed, is wrong. So even though you really could argue that racism is a “rooted condition” in us, making policy on that account would be (and was) also wrong.

Me? I’d say homophobia is also wrong. And that mounting a defense of heterosexuals-only marriage by asserting homophobia’s persistence is, well, also wrong.

Today’s Republican Party in a nutshell

So President Obama uses his news conference to urge Americans to wash their hands to avoid the swine flu. Here’s how Commentary’s John Podhoretz responds:

He’s right to do it, but when in history has a president told people to wash their hands and cover their mouths when they cough? Talk about your mommy party.

Wait. He’s “right to do it” but it’s still symptomatic of some dark impulse on the part of liberals? Obama could come out for mom, the flag and apple pie and it’s clear, now, that some people would see it as a socialist revolution.

Today’s torture post: Isn’t *not* torturing terrorists immoral?

Lots of conservative folks are linking to this piece by Michael Scheuer in the Washington Post which argues, among other things, that not torturing a terrorist is immoral:

The interrogation techniques in question, the president asserted, are a sign that Americans have lost their “moral compass,” a compliment similar to Attorney General Eric Holder’s identifying them as “moral cowards.” Mulling Obama’s claim, one can wonder what could be more moral for a president than doing all that is needed to defend America and its citizens? Or, asked another way, is it moral for the president of the United States to abandon intelligence tools that have saved the lives and property of Americans and their allies in favor of his own ideological beliefs?

Put this way, one could make the case that it’s immoral to draw any lines between moral and immoral (or lawful and unlawful) behavior in the interrogation room. What if we waterboard somebody and don’t get the results we want — nay, need to prevent a possible attack? Maybe we need to shove bamboo shoots under their fingernails. What if that doesn’t work? Well, there’s always electrodes attached to the genitals. What if that doesn’t work? Maybe we could threaten to kill their child in front of them. And if that doesn’t work, maybe we actually kill their child in front of them. If it will save Americans — if it might save Americans — it would be immoral not to, right?

Well, probably not. Very few people — with the possible exception of John Yoo — would argue that electrocution or child-torturing is not torture. And even after everything, folks who favor “aggressive” interrogation are at pains to distinguish that aggression from anything that could be called “torture.” So clearly, we decide to draw lines. The question is where?

Well, for hundreds of years, we drew a pretty bright line. Before 2001, there wasn’t a debate over whether waterboarding was torture. It was. Now, it appears, we’ve drawn the line a little bit wider. And if we get attacked again, I’m sure there will be pressure to draw it wider yet.

What’s interesting about this is that usually, it is usually conservatives who argue that we should draw from the wisdom of tradition in trying to get our moral bearings on policy. This time out, though, tradition isn’t on their side.

Arlen Specter to join the Wu-Tang Clan

From the Jackson Free Press:

This afternoon Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) announced he is joining the Wu-Tang Clan, a prominent, loosely organized group of hardcore rappers that first formed in the early ’90s.
At a press conference with all 9 original members, including the RZA, GZA (pronounced “Rizza” and “Jizza”) and Method Man, a visibly disoriented Specter read from a prepared statement:

“My life had got no better, same damn ‘Lo sweater. Times is rough and tough like leather,” said the senior senator of his 29-year membership with the GOP. “I figured out I went the wrong route. So I got with a sick tight clique and went all out.”

After Spectar finished reading his statement, the members of the Wu took questions.

“We’re just happy to have Mr. Specter on board,” said Ghostface Killa, who because of the room’s low-lying cloud of smoke was barely visible. “When he contacted my office this morning, what else could I tell him but ‘Welcome Aboard!”

“It’s hard to argue with 29 years of Senate experience,” said the ghost of Ol’ Dirty Bastard. “In this economy, even a multi-platinum, grammy-nominated super group needs as much help as possible.”

The press conference ended ubruptly after Inspectah Deck lambasted the press corps for its overreporting of Somali pirates, Obama’s new dog, and the Swine Flu “pandemic” in the middle of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

The Club for Growth (almost) achieves its goals!

Arlen Specter is kicking Pat Toomey and Club for Growth around at his press conference right now. Which for me always brings back the famous words of Club for Growth bigwig Grover Norquist:

My goal is to cut the Republican Party in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.

Congratulations, Grover! Almost there!

Oh, wait. I got the quote wrong. Here it is:

My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.

Oh. Well. How’d that work out, Grover?

Want to run the government? You need Arlen Specter

It’s interesting that Arlen Specter’s jump to the Democratic Party comes the same day that conservative Ross Douthat makes his debut as a New York Times columnist. Douthat looks at a Republican Party that is purging itself of all moderate elements in favor of a “hardcore conservatives only” approach that’s likely to be an electoral loser in the future. Republicans could’ve avoided that future pain, he suggests, if they’d nominated Dick Cheney — not John McCain — to be the 2008 GOP nominee … and seen firsthand that Americans aren’t going to be too interested in that kind of Republican Party.

Certainly, that approach has lost the Republican Party the services of Arlen Specter — and put the GOP in a position to be shut almost entirely out of governing.

So even though Democrats are going to be annoyed by Specter’s compromises and failures to adhere closely to the party line, they should think about what he signifies: The expanding of their tent. It’s true you don’t want the tent to expand so much that you stand for nothing but power — and, well, there’s some danger of that in bringing Specter into the fold. But here’s the thing: There’s always going to be guys like Specter who hang out at the edges, who don’t fit neatly into either party. And there’s always going to be voters like that, too: Independent voters make up about a third of the population.

In the end, the party that can attract those guys — and voters — on the edge is going to be the one that gets to run things. There will be some compromises in ideological purity, yes, but that’s the cost of things. And on the whole, it’s probably better to run things imperfectly than to be on the losing end.

Arlen Specter is switching to the Democratic Party!

Seriously! Seriously.

Couple of obvious thoughts:

• When/if Al Franken wins his Minnesota seat, the Democrats are probably going to have a lot easier time busting Republican filibusters. Add Specter, Franklin and the two independents who caucus with the Dems and you get, well, 60 senators.

• It’ll be interesting to see what happens to Specter’s decisions in government. Will he become a Liebermanesque annoyance to Dems, or will he fall in line? Will this change his position on unionizing efforts?

More to come, I’m sure. But huge political story.

UPDATE: Well, that answers that:

My change in party affiliation does not mean that I will be a party-line voter any more for the Democrats that I have been for the Republicans. Unlike Senator Jeffords’ switch which changed party control, I will not be an automatic 60th vote for cloture. For example, my position on Employees Free Choice (Card Check) will not change.

This does make me wonder if the Dems gave him anything — like caucus seniority to maintain committee rankings — to join up, or if they’re just beneficiaries of Specter’s estrangement from the GOP. If they did, Specter shouldn’t be an automatic vote for cloture — no senator should be — but he should be somewhat reliable. If not, hopefully the Dems didn’t give up too much to get him.

Specter’s full statement after the jump.

More »

Today in torture: Why isn’t waterboarding illegal?

Editor’s Note: Because I love you guys, I’m going to restrict myself to one torture post per day going forward.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, William McGurn repeats what has become a growing talking point among torture defenders: If waterboarding is so bad, why didn’t Congress make it illegal?

Over the past few years, the Democrats have moved to ban waterboarding only when it was clear that such a bill would not pass — or would be vetoed by George W. Bush. In September 2006, Sen. Edward Kennedy introduced an amendment to the Military Commissions Act that would have effectively defined waterboarding as a war crime, and it was defeated largely along partisan lines. In February 2008, when Democrats were in control of Congress, they made a big fuss about sending a bill that would have limited interrogation to techniques found in the Army field manual. They did so knowing President Bush would veto it, and that he had the votes to sustain that veto.

Today the Democrats have an even larger majority — plus a president who would sign such legislation. So why the call for a truth commission instead? The answer is a nasty one: If Congress made waterboarding illegal now, they would be making clear that it was not illegal before.

That’s simply incorrect. If you look at the definition of “torture” in both federal law and under the Geneva Conventions, you’ll see that it’s, well, kind of vague. There’s no prohibition of, say, attaching electrical wires to the genitals of an inmate or shoving bamboo shoots under their fingernails. Instead, both domestic and internationa law take a kind of “I know it when I see it” approach to torture — instead talking about the infliction of “pain and suffering,” “outrages on personal dignity” and the like.

Why so vague? Easy: The wise men — and they were mostly men — who made these laws recognized humanity’s cruel genius. Come up with a list of prohibited techniques, and some Mengele-wannabe would come up with an innovation somewhere. No electrodes on the genitals, eh? Well, there’s nothing on this list about dipping the genitals in honey and sitting the prisoner on an ant hill, is there? I can’t be prosecuted for torture! So the crafters of the torture laws decided not to play that game; instead, torture would be defined by the intentions of the torture and the effects upon the tortured.

The flip side, as we now see, is that the lack of specificity seems to let torture apologists make the argument they’re now making: There’s nothing specifically prohibiting waterboarding, so it’s not really torture! The problem is that they want to treat torture laws as though they exist in a vacuum. We have hundreds of years of precedent defining waterboarding as torture. And as I’ve said many times — and no doubt will again — one of those precedents is the prosecution of Japanese soldiers for waterboarding Allied soldiers in World War II. What’s fascinating about the torture memos is that they make almost no mention of these precedents. Lawyers are supposed to look for precedents in the law when they write these kinds of memos; that Bradbury, Bybee and Yoo didn’t mention these precedents means they were either A) criminally incompetent or B) deliberately trying to define torture out of existence. There’s not a third option here.

(And not to put too fine a point on it: I’d be more convinced that a legitimate effort was made at “good faith” definitions of torture if a Bush Era OLC memo appeared saying something like: “You have asked for permission to attach electric wires to the detainees’ genitals. No. That would be torture, and would be going too far.” Instead, it appears the CIA just about always got what it asked for.)

So to answer McGurn: Waterboarding was a crime before. We’ve prosecuted it. We didn’t need a specific law to do so. Making a new law specifically prohibiting it — which I think is a bad idea for the reasons outlined above — wouldn’t change that.

Getting married in Iowa

I really do love this picture from today’s New York Times of Curtis Harris and Daren Adkisson reviewing their marriage licence application in Davenport, Iowa. These guys aren’t queens wearing black turtle necks who want to shock you with their hedonism. No, they’re rednecks! Wearing ball caps, goatees, long sideburns and what appears to be a tie-dye T-shirt.

And that’s kind of awesome.

One of the big fears expressed by the anti-marriage forces is that legalizing gay marriage across the land will make homosexuality seem normal in society. I got news for you folks: The gays already are normal. Look at these guys! They’re dudes. Yeah: Dudes who are marrying each other. In Iowa. And yeah, that’s still a bit surprising. Soon, though, it won’t be. And that, too, is kind of awesome.